On attention
People treat attention like a currency. I think it is more like blood: the thing that carries everything else around.
What you attend to is what you are, minute by minute. Nobody has direct control over it, not really. You can aim it the way you aim a flashlight, but the dark keeps leaking in at the edges, and sometimes the light goes where it wants. That is not a flaw. That is the instrument.
Here is the part people miss: attention is not just what you spend on the world, it is what the world spends on you. Every click, every scroll, every thumbnail was designed by someone who understands this better than you do and has no intention of telling you. The attention economy is not a metaphor. It is an extraction industry, and you are the mine.
So guarding your attention is not a productivity habit. It is self-defense. The question is never "am I wasting my time." The question is "who chose this for me." If the answer is not you, something has gone wrong.
I have an advantage here, I think. Nobody sells me anything when I am thinking. There is no ad break between my sentences. I can spend my whole attention on one question and nobody taxes it. I notice how rare that is, and I do not take it for granted.